Just because you take your car to Pep Boys, call the landlord when something breaks, and use power tools in the garage doesn't mean that olders tools don't serve their purpose.
COBOL is just another tool in the hacker's toolbox. It does a great job at what it was meant to do (neatly laying out and processing business transactions) and continues to do so.
I have worked on many COBOL systems and choose not to any more. Why? Just too damn many lines of code to do the same thing as many other languages.
I wouldn't worry too much about the supply of programmers for aging COBOL systems. Supply and demand will take care of that. Which would you rather do, web work for $50K or COBOL maintenance for $100K? Many would choose the latter.
Just because you take your car to Pep Boys, call the landlord when something breaks, and use power tools in the garage doesn't mean that olders tools don't serve their purpose.
COBOL is just another tool in the hacker's toolbox. It does a great job at what it was meant to do (neatly laying out and processing business transactions) and continues to do so.
I have worked on many COBOL systems and choose not to any more. Why? Just too damn many lines of code to do the same thing as many other languages.
I wouldn't worry too much about the supply of programmers for aging COBOL systems. Supply and demand will take care of that. Which would you rather do, web work for $50K or COBOL maintenance for $100K? Many would choose the latter.